


Give and take

by Heliopause



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It, Gift Fic, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-06
Updated: 2014-12-09
Packaged: 2017-12-10 14:24:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/787061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heliopause/pseuds/Heliopause
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A mind too strong, and a mind too weak.  It's hard to tell who is giving and who is taking.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The woman in the red crinoline sweeps into the London bar. She is dark-haired, impeccably groomed, and radiating danger. It pours off her, like invisible waves. This bar, this London bar - the people here know how to keep out of trouble. They keep their eyes to themselves; they pretend she's not here. Only one person - a redheaded woman, sitting alone - looks at her, and then without interest, just a passing glance, as part of a more searching survey of the crowd. Nevertheless, it is enough, and the woman in the crinoline sweeps across the room and sits at the small table alongside the only person with the courage, or the folly, to notice her. 

"Call me Marcie."

"If that's your name," the redhead says, indifferently. Her eyes roam around the bar, restlessly. Whoever she's waiting for, it isn't this.

"Oh, _names_." with delicate scorn. "What do names mean? I used to give names to little children..." but the woman in the crinoline is speaking to herself by now. The other woman is not even bothering to look like she is listening. "...day by day and hour by hour, as they came in... I gave them by the alphabet.... Andrew, Betty, Charlie, Donna..."

The other woman moves suddenly, and her drink spills. "Look what you made me do! _What_ , anyway? What about me?"

"Nothing about you. Do you think I care about you? Do you think I ever cared about any of them?"

"Dunno who _them_ is, but I can spot whossname when I hear it."

" _Whossname..._ " She repeats the word as if holding out a particularly repellent dirty rag. "You speak very _common_ , my dear." It is endearment which shows no affection, and all contempt. "We would beat the children if we heard them speak as common as that.... But of course, they very seldom spoke at all."

The other woman's eyes have sharpened; her focus is now fully on the woman in the red crinoline. "If you really did, I'm calling Child Protection." Then, looking more carefully at the dress, " 'S'not real, though, is it? You're out of a theatre sort of thing. Local dramatics?"

The woman in red raises her eyebrows and smiles slightly. She turns and signals for a drink.

"That won't work here." says the redhead. "You'll have to..." and then stops, startled. The bar-worker has put a drink on the table. Dry gin, with ice. 

The slight smile of the stranger becomes a fraction more pronounced, and very self-satisfied. 

"You see, my dear? All you need is to be clear and strong in your thinking. And I was very strong." For the first time a shade of uncertainty appears on her face. " _Am._ I am very strong."

"So you say." The other woman speaks absently, with a mild, purely habitual hostility; she has resumed her scanning of the crowd at the bar.

"Who are you looking for, my dear? Have your companions left you? Have they disappeared? I disappeared once, I think. I was somewhere and then I was here." 

"They'll be here."

"Or they won't. You are foolish to let yourself need a companion..." It was said with renewed complacency.

"I don't need them. I just came out for a drink with my mates..."

"And they've left you all alone. How very sad." But the voice shows an insolent satisfaction that it should so. "You see, my dear, you should learn from me. I don't need anyone. I was alone and I knew I was alone, and I took control of my own life. You should train yourself not to need anyone else."

"I don't need anyone! I just wanted a bit of a laugh, that's all."

"You should train yourself not to need laughing. Laughing is emotion, and emotion has no place in the superior mind. Emotion tormented..." She stops; the doubt again crosses her face; it is almost fear.

"You're cracked. How'd you know my name?"

"Names are meaningless."

"Yeah, well. How'd you know mine?"

"Oh!" Realisation. She has remembered her roll-call of children's names from the orphanage days. "It's Donna! I see now. And how meaningless is _that_ , Donna, Lady, who speaks so common?"

"You can piss off, if you don't like my name. You can piss off anyway."

"Oh, but I _do_ like your meaningless name. Donna. Donna." She mouths the name, slowly, tasting it, savouring it.. "Donna nobis.... do you give peace, Lady-Donna?"

She is trying to be cruel, to be ironic, but her question slips, and her yearning becomes apparent, even to herself. 

"Look, you've got problems, Marcie, I can see that..."

"Call me Mercy."

"What happened to 'Marcie'?" But Donna now looks troubled, too. She has stopped trying to find someone she knows in the bar, and is looking carefully at the woman in the crinoline.

"You're right. It should be Marcie, because Mercy has no meaning. My other name has meaning, though. My other name is the right name. What's your other name, Donna-nobis?"

"Noble. Not _Nobiss_ , it's Noble. Look, are you all right?"

" _My_ name is Hartigan. Heart-i'-gone. Mercy's heart is gone."

Donna looks around for help; the rest of the bar ignores her.

"My heart is gone, but I have a very strong mind." She looks across at Donna. "I was told once, 'the most remarkable mind this world has ever seen'." She is remembering, and is troubled. "The most remarkable mind..."

"Would you like... are you all right? Can I get you something?"

"You can't give me anything, Donna-nobis... They gave me so much. Cybermen. Did you never meet them? I think not; they did not give me any information about you, and they gave me all the information they had. But I already had a remarkable mind."

"Where do you live? I think I should get you home."

"You can't get me home. Your mind is too weak. You could not even imagine my home, and your mind would break if you ever saw what I have seen in time and space..."

Something in this seems to cause Donna some pain. She puts a hand to her forehead, uncertainly, but tries again. 

"How far away do you live? I've got a car."

"Not far away, but long ago, I think. My home was destroyed long ago. You have a weak mind, and couldn't hold all the things they showed me."

"Less of the insults, if you don't mind. But if you've got no home, you'd better come home with me."

Miss Hartigan continues, oblivious. "I could see the stars, the worlds beyond..."

"The worlds beyond," Donna murmurs. Her eyes are shut, and she is shaking her head, bewildered.

Miss Hartigan looks at her sharply. "You do know! You know something! But your mind is not strong. Your mind will break."

For a minute she simply observes the other, dispassionately. Then, without any warning, she leans forward and pinches a nerve in Donna's neck. Donna collapses; she is unconscious.

There is a slight stir in those nearby, but Miss Hartigan's complete self-possession discourages any attention from anyone else in the bar. She leans forward, and speaks, confidentially, to the unconscious Donna.

"They did it with electricity. They gave me their mind with electricity. They wanted to take my mind, but my mind was too strong; my mind was too strong, even for me, and I lost much by it. And now with their added mind, my mind is so strong that I do not need electricity to share it. Donna-donna-nobis.... what can you give me? I do not want your mind. Your mind is not strong. But .... how if I gave you the strength of mine? Would you be able to bear the knowledge you have hidden, if I could do that?" She pauses. "I wonder. And would that be mercy, or cruelty, to open your mind again?"

She places her hands on Donna's temples, and focusses all her mind on her, for the space of two long minutes. Then she sits back, warily, and waits.

Donna wakes. 

The two women stare at each other intently, one as a scientist, tensed to see the result of a life-or-death experiment, one as a wondering newcomer, uncertain in a strange world. 

Finally, Miss Hartigan speaks,.

"So now there are two of us with remarkable minds, Donna." 

Donna does not reply, and Miss Hartigan's anxiety spills into a rush of words. "What do you feel? What do you see? Was it... _cruelty?_ " 

"How do you mean?" says Donna. "What were we talking about? What's going on?"

Miss Hartigan retreats to a watchful neutrality. "You very kindly said you would take me home, Donna. You were going to give me a bed for the night."

"Why?'

"Because you give mercy. Because I don't have a home any more. It's the sort of thing you do, I think. You are what I was not. You can give me what I have lost."

"Yeah, well...yeah. You can come home." Donna is puzzled. Her mind is feeling great power, but something is missing; she has no knowledge to use her power on. She shakes her head, runs her hand over her face; something is not quite clear. "What happened to your home, anyway?"

"I am not certain. But I believe that when he destroyed them, when he broke the connection, he threw them, and me, back _through the Vortex of Time itself..._ " She is watching Donna still more closely. "The Vortex of Time... I have seen them, Donna, and the whole of infinity." 

Donna has risen; her face is working, and a light begins to pulse around her. Miss Hartigan continues, still watching Donna, " _I have seen them, and it is glorious_... have you not seen, also... seen into the depths of time and infinity?" 

And Donna sees it all. All the knowledge of a Time Lord floods back through her, a life-giving flood flowing into a mind with more strength than all of the Cybermen, a mind now strong enough to hold all the Time Lord's knowledge in equilibrium, and drive it through into world-shaking action. 

The light of the knowledge strengthens and surges through her. She is visibly _amazing_.

Miss Hartigan seizes her hand. "Do you know it now? Can you see it? Your mind can hold it all?"

But Donna does not need to answer. She flicks a smile at Miss Hartigan - both of them see, both of them know, so instead of answering, she moves on to the next thing.

"London. There's a lot to do in London. But then again, there's all of time and space."

Miss Hartigan's turn now, to raise her hand uncertainly to her face. Her exploring fingers meet tears, and she laughs with joy. She has found something lost long ago.

"And so...?"

"And so," says Donna - brilliantly, _blindingly_ , pragmatic - "and so we'll go home tonight, and tell my mum and my grandad that we're off, and then tomorrow, we'll go."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, well. At time of writing I haven't seen past 'Vincent and the Doctor',and though I've tried to avoid spoilers, I'm pretty sure this isn't going to be canon. Set sometime after 'Journey's End' and 'The Next Doctor'.  
> Some of Miss Hartigan's words (those in italics) are taken from words spoken by her in the episode "The Next Doctor'.


	2. And then, tomorrow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is posted with a cheerful wave to cofax. If I knew how to have it marked as a gift, it would be so marked, but as it is, the cheerful wave! o/

"I..." Mercy Hartigan grapples for a moment with an unfamiliar and uncomfortable circumstance. "I rather... like your grandfather."

"Yeah... yeah. He's all right, Grandad."

"You have a... family." Her mouth twists as she says the word, as if she's tasted something alien, and faintly unpleasant. "Are you sure you really want to _—_ "

"Wanna go off and have a bit of fun with you? Yeah. Grandad's seen me go off before; he likes me to have fun."

But Miss Hartigan's body _—_ for it is Miss Hartigan again, not Marcie or Mercy now _—_ is tightly upright, rigid with determination to demonstrate that she is not vulnerable, that the Cyberking is still and will always be dominant, in her, and in the sprawling city around them.

Donna continues talking without seeming to notice.

"And listen, if that skinny boy in a suit thinks he can box me up here in Chiswick and throw away the key, he can take a running jump off of Hammersmith Bridge. He's a bossy little bastard."

"Men tend to be that, I have noted. They tried to control me _—_ once. _He_ tried, but..." Her eyes are dark with remembered anger.

"Yeah. So anyway... about time for the two of us to have a bit of fun, yeah?"

Mercy relaxes, fractionally.

"Where, precisely, is this _fun?_ " She looks around. She does not seem impressed by twenty-first century London. "Or perhaps I should say _when_? I do not have a device to travel in space, but I have a Dimension Vault, which is adequate to travel in Time."

"No problem. Between us we ought to be able to shonky up a TARDIS easily enough. But even earth's worth a look, and I've got a car that'll start us off." She pauses, musing. "And there's planes.  Seychelles'd be nice. Or North Pole _—_ the northern lights... How'd you get a Dimension Vault, anyway?"

Miss Hartigan stiffens again, as at a challenge. "I acquired it as part of my... severance package, from the Cybermen. They owed me that, and more."

Donna laughs. "Serve 'em right. They sound like a right lot. But we can forget about them now. Where do you want to go, then? In time or in space?"

Some faint disturbance trembles through Miss Hartigan's hauteur.

"Everyone _did_ forget. I was the Cyberking, Donna Noble, but it's as if I had never been at all. As if there was never any monstrous Cyberman stalking through these streets."

Donna's eyes narrow.

"Another mindwipe? Who does he think he is? But..." She's visibly analysing, deducing, deciding. "No. He couldn't do that to all of London."

She stops and thinks. "I don't like the sound of it."

"I had real power, not just over little children but over the whole of London and now even the memory of it..."

Donna is shaking her head. "Yeah, but it's more than just you, Marcie. I don't like the sound of it. The smell of it. There's something _off_ about this."

She ponders. Then _—_ "Marcie, we'll have to put off the fun for a bit, and put off making the TARDIS. There's something else I need to make first."

"Oh?  And what is that?" Mercy is watching her closely.

"Come on. Gramps'll let me tinker about a bit in his shed. There's one thing I can think of that might suck out all memory of something _—_ and worse than that. We need to build..."

"What is it? What has wiped out all memory of me?" Mercy asks urgently.

But Donna has already gone.

The day's half gone when she emerges, and places the chronotron displacement detector triumphantly on the dashboard of her car.

"So _—_ you coming?" she calls. Mercy comes slowly, almost resentfully, and inserts herself gingerly into the passenger seat.

"Not a TARDIS, but it'll do for a start, hey? Love this car!" Donna grins, crashing the gears and swerving out into the road. "You keep an eye on _that_ , and tell me where we're heading."

"I have no idea. The _device_ you have placed here" _—_ the tone hints at a faint distaste _—_ "suggests fifteen degrees north-west."

Donna spins the wheel. "Oxford, maybe? Some mad scientist? Well, we'll find out when we get there!"

It's not Oxford; they leave Oxford behind in late afternoon. 

To her own surprise, Mercy rather enjoys seeing the green country unroll along the road, enjoys the effortless speed of the journey.

"Traffic! Always bleeding traffic on the M40," Donna fumes.

Mercy smiles obliquely, and checks the flickering needles again. "Just drive, Lady Donna. It seems we're getting closer."

But it is already evening when they arrive at the small village half an hour past Gloucester. They get out, and stare up at one lighted back window, in one undistinguished house. Donna is tensed, alert, but Mercy Hartigan is, if anything, amused at being brought on this long chase without explanation

"You have brought me this far, Donna Noble-Nobis. Perhaps it is time to tell me why."

"Oh!" Donna swings around, thoroughly taken aback for the first time that day. "I thought you'd know! I suppose Cybermen don't have all the Time Lord knowledge. Well, of course not. Makes sense."

"Yes. So tell me."

"If it's what I think, I'll show you." She tests the back door, and opens it, cautiously.

Mercy Hartigan raises her eyebrows, but follows her in through the door.

Upstairs, they find a small girl, half-asleep in her bed.  On the wall above is a thin, glowing crack.  Donna traces along it with one finger, then speaks in a whisper.

"That's it.  That crack."

"That's what we've been chasing? I can see the energy. But it was time energy, wasn't it, that your device was measuring?"

"Fluctuations in, yeah.  Time energy is seeping out from it."

"And?"

"And consuming space and time.  Making things not to exist. Things, and people." She glances at Mercy. "And Cyberkings."

"There was only one," says Mercy coldly.  "There was only me."

"Yeah.  I expect the burst of energy that threw you here was what got that whole thing... consumed.  All bar you."

"My mind is _very_ strong.  But everything else from then, and all memory of me. Made... not to have existed. I'm forgotten."  It is said with an angry resignation.  "As you said, Lady Donna."

"I said forget _them_ , the Cybermen. But not this.  It started consuming with your Cyberking outfit, but it won't stop there.  I think it's just about used up the space-time it picked up then.  I think it's probably just started up again.  Unless we block it, will only get worse; if we don't stop it, it will just go on consuming all of space and time.  Not just making things not to exist, but to never have existed.  God knows how this kid isn't gone already.  In fact _—_ " 

She reaches down and gently shakes one shoulder of the little girl, who stirs, sits up and stares around, confused.

"Mummy?"

Donna glances to Mercy.  "She's not here right now."

The little girl seems to be gathering scattered thoughts.  "No, I know that. I know there's no such person, really." 

They glance at each other, over her head.  She intercepts the glance, and speaks in a slightly defensive, defiant tone.

"I _know_ that. Just sometimes when I'm a bit asleep, I just say it."

"You're here all alone?" Mercy asks.

"Yes. It's just me."

"No," says Donna.  "We're here now to look after you.  We're your aunties.  I'm your mum's sister, right?"

The little girl shrugs, watchful, but accepting. She lies down again.

"And this is your auntie... ah... Sharon."

"Sharon?" hisses Mercy, outraged.

"Mercy's not a normal name any more." Donna hisses back.  "Sharon. Get used to it." 

Mercy does not protest again, and they stand watching until the child is asleep again. Then _—_

"Consuming all of space and time? Making it not to have been?"

"Yeah. Unless we block it, everything. Swallowed up and never existed, like this poor kid's parents."

"But is it possible? Can this be done? And need we delay our holiday for this?"

" _For all—of—time—and—space?_ Are you _kidding_ me?" Donna's vehemence has an energy which for a moment makes the time-energy crack seem dim by comparison.

  
A slow smile spreads across Mercy's face. "Well, yes, a little. And it's quite... fun. But yes, I concede. Our holiday can wait. How do we block it, Lady Donna?"

"Well..." Donna speaks reluctantly, breaking what she knows will be bad news. "We have to feed it. It'll just keep taking little things _—_ like her parents _—_ unless we can shut it up for a while by feeding it with a... a big, complicated space-time event."

"Which is...?"

"Well... we _could_ throw in the skinny boy in the suit. A Time Lord," _—_ this is said with a placatory grin _—_ " is a _brilliantly_ complicated space-time event."

Mercy brushes aside the grin to focus on the import of the words.

"But he's not here.  There's no Time Lord here, Donna."  

"Not a whole one, no."  

They stare at each other for one long moment.

"Donna... " Mercy has seen it all, all the paths that this conversation can take, but she has to try. "Donna. A Cyberking who has been thrown more than a century through time is a complicated space-time event."

"Only a single century? Don't make me laugh!"  Donna looks at the crack, consideringly.  "No, we can't take the chance, Mercy.  We have to feed it.  As it is, I'm only half Time Lord, but that should shut it up until he gets here."

"Until he gets here?"

"Oh, yes. An anomaly like this, on earth? Yes, he'll be along."

"I... " Whatever Mercy was about to say is lost. She rethinks,and tries again, one last throw. "Aren't you... rather afraid to leave me in sole control of a child?" Her mouth quivers slightly at the word _control_. "Aren't you worried about the possible risk, knowing what you know about what happened at my orphanage?"

"Knowing what I know..." Donna doesn't take her eyes from the crack, which is beginning to pulsate light. "Knowing everything I know, Mercy, I can't imagine what possible risk there could be."

Mercy Hartigan leans back against the wall. Her face is unreadable.

"So you will save the universe and I will... look after one little girl. You will be Noble through time and space, and I will be her utterly forgettable Aunt Sharon."

"Yeah... that's about the size of it." Donna looks straight to her, now. "Mercy... There's no time for this.  I will be back. Don't know how, don't know what I'll find through there, don't know how far you'll have to twist the Doctor's arm. But I _will_ be back. You build a TARDIS or whatever you think'll work best for us, and when I've got the other side of this thing sorted _—_ and when that wonky Time Lord finds his way back to sort it at this end..."   Her face lights up with a suddenly brilliant, gleefully anticipatory grin. "...then I'll be back. And then _—_ fun times, yeah?"

She takes a deep breath.

"Yes," says Mercy, bleakly. "Fun times."

And now the Doctor-Donna has launched herself into the heart of the crack torn in the fragile skin of the universe, and there is a sudden blaze of energy reaching out and pulling her in and then... quietness. The crack has fallen silent. It is much smaller and darker than it was.

The little girl stirs.

"Mummy?

"No. No... she's had to go away for a little time. Don't..." Mercy very stiffly reaches a hand to touch the child's shoulder, and pats it, twice, awkwardly. "Don't worry. I'm here to look after you. Everything's all right."

The child frowns at her, briefly.

"Oh, yes. I remember." She bundles herself over, sorting herself out for sleeping again in a business-like way. "Which one are you?"

"Shhh..." Mercy strokes the shoulder again, and smiles in a private amusement. "Shhhh... go back to sleep. I'm your Auntie Sharon."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This second chapter is written to be more or less canon-compliant with the episodes 'The Eleventh Hour' and 'Flesh and Stone", in terms of the dangers of the crack, and how it can be temporarily plugged. And also written as a gift for cofax, who wanted to see Donna Noble saving the universe. :)


End file.
